Monatsarchiv: November 2011

Al-Qaida´s branch in the South of Yemen – „Ansar ul-Shariah“ has released a the second issue of its newly founded newsletter. This time the Jihadi publishers of propaganda wing „Madad News“ present never seen before images of the two American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan who were both killed in a U.S. drone strike on September 30 in Yemen´s Jawf region.

Anwar al-Awlaki, born in the US-State of New Mexico, was considered a influential Jihadi preacher acting as a spiritual advisor in the Yemeni network of Al-Qaida. He is also suspected of having recruited a number of Western-educated Islamists – like Nigerian Umar Farooq Abdulmutallab and Major Nidal Hassan – who later carried out terrorist attacks.

Samir Khan – Chief Editor of „Inspire“

Samir Khan, a Saudi-born son of Pakistani parents grew up in New York and has lived in North Carolina for several years before he joined Al-Qaida in Yemen (AQAP) in 2009. Khan became the chief editor of AQAP´s English-language magazine „Inspire“.

His name is one with a very powerful and well-respected meaning – „Sword of Islam“. Yet the most prominent son of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, has never truely lived up to the meaning of his name. Maybe for that reason the Libyan opposition fighters labeled him „Saif al-Kufr“ instead – Sword of Disbelief.

Today Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi was captured by captured by the forces of the Transitional Council in Obari in the South of Libya and taken to Tripolis in a plane.

For months the Gaddafi son had been living in hiding, releasing audio tapes in which he called the opposition enemies of Libya. „Go to hell you rats and NATO“, he said in a audio tape released in October.

Just before the regime in Tripolis collapsed Saif al-Islam announced he would lead a Jihad against NATO and their Libyan allies. The 39 year-old Gaddafi son declared he had joined with Islamic forces and was ready to fight. Truth was Saif al-Islam fled the capital and was hiding somewhere in the desert region close to the border to Niger.

Two Gaddafi son´s were killed by the NATO bombing in recent months, two others fled to Algeria. Saif al-Islam it was reported, was ready to surrender and turn himself in for criminal prosecution.

Videos from Libya that were uploaded onto the Internet today show Saif al-Islam´s private gun he was carrying when rebels arrested him. It appears to be a silver-plated assault rifle.

Ibrahim Adam, a 24 year-old Briton from East London disappeared in May 2007 along with his older brother Lamine. Both men had been put under a control order after they had previously tried to travel to Iraq and were stopped in Syria. Nevertheless they managed to leave the UK to wage Jihad abroad.

Another brother of Ibrahim and Lamine Adam, named Anthony Garcia, was jailed for life in 2004 for plotting to blow up a night club in London with a fertiliser bomb. Garcia had attended an al-Qaida training camp in 2003 from which wrote a letter to his younger brothers telling them about the virtue of martyrdom and Jihad.

In August Ibrahim Adam and another British Islamist named Mohammed Azmir Khan were killed in a U.S. drone strike in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. Adam was one of the most wanted terrorists in the UK. His passport photographs were found in an al-Qaida safe house in Norway alerting intelligence agencies around the world.

Mohammed Azmir Khan, a 37-year old father of three, and the Adam brothers were part of a group of Islamic militants from Illford (Essex). Khan´s brother Mohammed Jabbar Ahmed known as „Abdul Jabber“, was killed by a U.S. drone in North Waziristan on September 8 2010.

Read about the two British Jihadi militants killed in August this year in this great piece by „The Telegraph“